Fussy kitties!!

[MidnightMeltdown]

I have two extremely fussy 9 month old kittens. They've weren't too bad when they were younger, but they've become fussier and fussier the older they've got, and they now refuse to eat anything other than Felix as good as it looks.

I've tried them on: Allpaws, HiLife, Feringa, Whiskers, Cosma Nature, Rosies Farm, Lillies Kitchen, Mjamjam, James Wellbeloved and Little Big Paws.

I don't mind them having Felix, but I would like them to eat some foods with a better meat content as well. I usually put one of these foods down for breakfast when I think they will be hungriest. They sniff it and then walk off in absolute disgust. I leave it down for 30 mins or so and then I put it in the fridge and put it down again at lunch time. Kitties are not impressed and keep crying for food. Usually by dinner time I give in as I hate seeing them go hungry all day. Sometimes I can get away with mixing one of the foods with Felix, but this only works if there is a very small proportion of the offending food, otherwise it will be rejected.

WWYD? Should I just give in a feed them a diet of nothing but Felix?

Do you give dry and wet food or just wet?

Mine get high meat/no grain dry food left down for them and then wet food a couple of times a day. They are fussy with the wet but will currently eat fish varieties of felix doubly delicious and gourmet perle beef and tomato plus the odd sheba fish choice fish flavour in jelly.

They hate pate style food and any 'good' wet food gets ignored

If it’s what they will eat, then I would just let them have what they want. I know felix etc get bashed for seemingly being a poor choice, but the cats love it and happy cats are what matters.
Fwiw, I’ve had cats for nearly 50 years. Originally it was purina and kit e Kat, but for at least the last 25 years all our cats have had felix. They have all been offered other wet foods - but felix has always won. (The exception being tinned tuna).
Nearly all our cats have lived to 18+ exceptions being poisoned and road accidents.
Feed them what they like and you can afford.

You could try warming it up slightly, especially if it’s been in the fridge, but I agree that cats tell us what they’re having.

Our cat eats Sheba and Iams. On the rare occasion he turns his nose up at the Sheba we mix in a lick e lix, just so it doesn’t go to waste. Couldn’t do that for every meal though.

In my experience the...' they will eat it eventually, they won;t starve' really does not work.
One of mine would indeed starve if he does not like the food served up.
He mostly has Felix, eats it quite happily then after several sachets of a box of 40 decides he does not like it anymore. He also does not like the fish varieties which makes things difficult as I can only usually source large boxes with a mixture of meat and fish.
My other cat will only eat tinned whiskers, even from when she was a tiny kitten when I was trying her on all sorts to encourage her to eat. She never took to actual kiten food oddly enough.
She is not really motivated by food, apart from cat treats and you will never see her eating food out of my other cats bowl.

Ours all eat Felix and don't generally complain.
My previous two lived to 17 and 20 and were very healthy cats generally, so it doesn't seem too bad for them.

@dementedpixie

Do you give dry and wet food or just wet?

Mine get high meat/no grain dry food left down for them and then wet food a couple of times a day. They are fussy with the wet but will currently eat fish varieties of felix doubly delicious and gourmet perle beef and tomato plus the odd sheba fish choice fish flavour in jelly.

They hate pate style food and any 'good' wet food gets ignored

Yes they do always have dry food available too. At the moment I have Iams and James Wellbeloved dry food. The female usually eats a bit of this, but the male won't touch it unless he's absolutely desperate (i.e. has had to survive hours without any Felix!).

It's good to know that it's not just my cats that are this fussy! I'm hoping that things might improve a bit when they're adults and there's a bigger selection of food available. There doesn't seem to be as much variety in kitten food.

Are they spayed/neutered?
If so, you could start to introduce adult foods now as their calorie needs decrease after its done.

I agree there is more variety in the adult foods

Thanks all. I think that you're right, I'll stick to Felix for now. Having a daily standoff with them over food just isn't worth hassle. They'll probably get bored of Felix eventually anyway.

Yes they are spayed/neutered. I was thinking about transitioning them to adult food soon. I just hope that the adult version of Felix is acceptable, otherwise I'll have some kitty tantrums on my hands! You should have seen them a few weeks ago when they sold out of Felix and I had to buy supermarket own brand instead...

Mine often luck the jelly off Felix agail so when I saw the extra gravy version in morrison I snapped it up thinking it was a big treat. Nope.....you'd think it was poisoned. No interest. Mine are 10 months and I've just bought a 40 pouch box of adult Felix agail - I bet they decide after pouch 1 that they don't like it either!!!

I have 5 cats who are all fed Aldi tinned cat food as high meat content. They also have sachets in jelly and dried chicken food. They are not fussy, thankfully. They also like chicken cooked and chopped up once a week. They have bits of leftover roast meat once a week too.

@Grumpyoldpersonwithcats

Ours all eat Felix and don't generally complain. My previous two lived to 17 and 20 and were very healthy cats generally, so it doesn't seem too bad for them.

Yes, you're probably right. I had a cat growing up and I'm fairly sure that my parents only bought the cheapest available cat food (catkins or kittikat or whatever it was back then). He lived until he was 20 and never had any health issues at all (although he did eat a fair bit of his own natural 'catch of the day' food too!). I'm probably worrying a lot more than I should about the kittens.

@Mumdiva99

Mine often luck the jelly off Felix agail so when I saw the extra gravy version in morrison I snapped it up thinking it was a big treat. Nope.....you'd think it was poisoned. No interest. Mine are 10 months and I've just bought a 40 pouch box of adult Felix agail - I bet they decide after pouch 1 that they don't like it either!!!

I feel your pain! I have a huge cupboard full of expensive cat foods that my two won't eat! Will probably end up leaving them out for hedgehog of giving them to local cat charity.